When exactly the Planning Pocker played. I understand, when ever a new story popped up we have to do an estimation via Planning Pocker. New story may pop up during iteration and during sprint planning while clarifying story with PO and obviously during stating of the project. So based on this can I say it can be played

A. Before Release Planning MeetingB. During Sprint Planning Meeting - Both for new story that came up while clarifying doubt with PO and existing story in PBIC. During Sprint

1. A Team should play Planning Poker after a story writing workshop - say once product backlog is kind of ready by product owner.

so I have similar opinion with your 1st point when you said before release planning meeting. the estimates that comes out from this, serves input/basis to set release planning level targets or may be some short duration project goals.

2. I have similar opinion with your 3rd point = team should play during sprint [either before or after stand-up meetings] . if some new story appears out of no where and becomes priority.

Another scenario = product backlog grooming happens through out project and if required team can further play this game to arrive at better estimates as an when project moves forward.

Please note:

team should avoid playing planning poker during sprint planning meeting. we know sprint planning meeting schedule is divided in two halves. first half for selecting user stories out of product backlog. [ because we know product owner should have had prioritized product backlog ready right before sprint planning meeting. so not required to play planning poker at this time. if it happens you might not be able to complete sprint planning meeting timeline] and other half is for splitting user stories into number of tasks. here, team doesn't require to play planning poker because they can prepare list of tasks by taking as much as clarifications they can take from product owner.

so, sprint planning meeting doesn't require team to play planning poker. you pick stories either basis on velocity driver or commitment driven.

One more thing I want to add here is, do we play planning pocker during Release Planning? As per my understanding, YES we may play planning pocker during Release Planning as we do story point estimation / ideal day estimation along with the cost estimation in Release Planning. For Story Point estimation planning pocker is an ideal tool.

Planning poker should have already been played before release planning begin and below is the reason why.

We know that release planning is not official ceremony as per makers of scrum. so this is how it begins

step 1: the planning poker is played soon after product owner prepares first cut of product backlog. i mean soon after story writing workshop is done. step 2: basis on team's feedback/estimates, PO continue grooming the product backlog. he make sure all stories that are estimated as high value and high risk should come up in pyramid and low value , low risk should remain in epic format at lower level of pyramid. step 3: now looking at product backlog pyramid, there's comes a moment when PO says that first 6 stories out of 15 are required to launch the product in market [ here PO is talking about MMF]. step 4: here release planning start. Now team says, Okay so that means 6 stories are required to be deliver as part of first release. remaining they will target in subsequent releases. step 5: considering velocity, team commitments and other parameters, team decides on having two weeks of sprint that will deliver 2 points and hence 3 sprints would be required. step 6: the draft Release plan is ready which will give PO 6 stories. Team will meet PO and end user three times i.e during three sprint reviews. this is the moment when PO further get inputs on budget estimations. step 7: next, sprint planning begin for 1st sprint.

Summary- user story that has been rated high value and high risk are developed first. such stories become part of upcoming release plan. PO and team collaborate together and find out all such user-stories which are of high value and high risk using planning poker and various other tools. so planning poker is required to play before release planning because PO alone can't prioritize or short list story for release.

Could you please clarify if there any Ground Rule by PMI-ACP or Scrum Alliance that " We should NOT Play Planning Poker" during Sprint Planning meeting? I feel during second half of Sprint Planning , the planning poker allows/enables clear & detailed disaggregation of stories to tasks?

Every ceremony is time boxed in Scrum. The input to Sprint Planning meeting is

• The latest product Increment, • projected capacity of the Development Team during the Sprint, and past performance of the Development Team.• Product Backlog Before the meeting, it is ensured that team and PO collaborate for the Sprint Ready User stories in the Product Backlog. To stay in the goal of Sprint Planning meeting, it is very impotent. In general, the requirement which needs to be developed in next sprint has been clarified at User Story level already. The clarification during Sprint Planning meeting helps in task identification for the stories which have been selected.

In the case of exceptions, Scrum Team should have determined how to deal with it. The team knows how to accomplish the work best.